The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published the final rule for Obamacare’s Section 1557 last Friday, requiring healthcare providers receiving federal funds to perform “gender transition” services and abortions, or face termination of government aid, along with possible referral to the Department of Justice for legal action.

HHS states the rule “will help to advance equity and reduce health disparities by protecting some of the populations that have been most vulnerable to discrimination in the health care context.”

It encompasses any health program or activity, any part of which gets HHS funding, which would mean hospitals accepting Medicare and doctors who accept Medicaid, and any HHS-administered health program, as well as health insurance marketplaces and issuers that take part in those marketplaces.

The HHS claims the new rule “builds on prior Federal civil rights laws to prohibit sex discrimination in health care” and “also prohibits the denial of health care or health coverage based on an individual’s sex, including discrimination based on pregnancy, gender identity, and sex stereotyping. The final rule also requires covered health programs and activities to treat individuals consistent with their gender identity.”

The USCCB and other religiously affiliated groups had opposed the rule’s imposing coverage of abortion and “gender reassignment” treatment last fall.

The rule’s language indicates that it does not repeal current religious exemptions for faith-based healthcare providers, stating, “The final rule on Section 1557 does not include a religious exemption; however, the final rule does not displace existing protections for religious freedom and conscience.”

Nonetheless, it drew condemnation from religious liberty and family advocates for its lack of constitutionality and imposition of gender identity and abortion.

“As bad as the ACA is, it’s laughable to suggest that when Congress referred to ‘sex’ in Section 1557 it was referring to anything other than biological sex,” stated Ken Klukowski, attorney with First Liberty Institute and Breitbart News legal editor.

“This is Orwellian,” Klukowski wrote at Breitbart. “But beyond that, it is an unconstitutional assault on the First Amendment that the Obama administration is forcing their rejection of biological fact onto people whose faith teaches that ‘man’ and ‘woman’ refer to what they have meant for thousands of years, and that God purposefully created them that way.”

The executive director for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Doctor Jane Orient, said the government was presuming to dictate medical ethics through the rule, and it would lead to doctors and hospitals discontinuing acceptance of Medicare and Medicaid.

Orient decried the medical danger in the Obama Administration’s imposition of gender ideology as well.

“Transgender treatment, especially to minors, inflicts irreversible harm on persons too young to consent,” she stated. “It constitutes radical, non-consented social experimentation. Chemical or surgical castration should be considered a crime against humanity.”

“Affirming a patient’s delusions (e.g. that he really is a she) is considered psychiatric malpractice in other contexts,” Orient continued.

The Family Research Council (FRC) also criticized the Obamacare rule, and called upon Congress for redress.

“HHS’s final rule concocts out of thin air a redefinition of sex discrimination to include both gender identity and abortion,” FRC Vice President of Government Affairs David Christensen said in a statement. “This intolerant and unjust rule, in turn, threatens to force health care providers to participate in and perform services that substantially violate their consciences.”

Christensen called the rule regulatory overreach, and drew a parallel with the Obama Administration’s forcing gender identity on the nation’s public schools earlier last Friday under the guise of sex discrimination.

“This action erodes Americans’ freedom to believe and act in accordance with their beliefs,” Christensen stated, “not only as it relates to the privacy of the bathrooms but also now when it comes to the taking of innocent human life.”

Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska, also said last week’s letter of “guidance” from the White House signified a broken culture and its rejection of God, tyrannical tolerance, and a mistaken sense of civil rights.

“This ‘guidance’ is deeply disturbing,” he said. “In fact, the administration’s action is simply wrong. It is wrong to deny the fundamental difference between men and women; and to teach children that our identity, at its very core, is arbitrary and self-determined. God created us male and female, and policies like this deny the basic beauty of God’s creation.”

Writing in his May 17 column, Bishop Conley stated, “Our entire culture has been caught up in a kind of sentimentalized and relativized tyranny of tolerance: we vilify and condemn, ever more quickly, any sense of reasonable and ordered social policy. We have a vague sense that endorsing certain fashionable kinds of social and emotional disorders—including transgenderism—is a mandate of justice, or a victory for civil rights.”

“This directive is a sign of a great tragedy,” the bishop wrote. “We are living in an atheocracy: a society determined to stamp out every vestige of God’s plan for mercy, and justice, and goodness.”

“We are living in a society ensnared by the evil of relativism,” he continued, “to which human flourishing, in this life and the next, poses a threat.”

Obama’s Departments of Justice and Education issued a joint letter of “guidance” to all public schools last Friday mandating that schools allow students identifying as “transgender” access to showers, locker rooms, and restrooms of the opposite sex, as well as let them stay in the same hotel rooms during field trips with members of the opposite sex, or risk losing federal funding.

Schools are not allowed to require “transgender” students to use separate facilities, according to the Obama Administration directive, and must reference “transgender” students by their chosen name and gender-identifying pronoun. Further, schools are permitted to conceal the status of “transgender”-identifying students from their parents.

The letter caused immediate controversy, with several civic leaders having vowed to oppose the edict, and officials in at least a dozen states saying they will refuse to implement it.

“We are living in an atheocracy: a society determined to stamp out every vestige of God’s plan for mercy, and justice, and goodness.”

Two bishops at the helm of USCCB committees denounced the letter in a statement earlier this week.

Buffalo Bishop Richard Malone and Omaha Archbishop George Lucas called it “deeply disturbing,” saying it contradicts a basic understanding of human formation and fails to address the issues of individuals suffering with gender dysphoria.

All three Nebraska bishops, Omaha Archbishop George Lucas, Grand Island Bishop Joseph Hanefeldt and Bishop Conley, had opposed earlier this year a proposed policy for the state’s high school activities association to officially recognize subjective gender identity. The Nebraska School Activities Association (NSAA) Board of Directors later adopted the policy despite the bishops’ objection.

Bishop Conley called for “healing, not lamenting” in his column this week, and he called for people to stand up, saying the fight would not be easy or glamorous, and that it needed to be fought by speaking heart to heart with others about Christ’s healing. The bishop also emphasized the need for prayer.

He said moral relativism results in people facing real problems not receiving the help they need.

“But the real victims of our culture of relativism are those who suffer from serious problems, and who need compassionate help,” said Bishop Conley. “Pathological confusion about one’s own identity is a kind of illness. It brings tremendous personal and emotional difficulties. Transgenderism cries out for compassionate assistance.”

“Pope Francis says that ‘acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital,’ and ‘valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary’ for authentic human freedom,” the bishop continued.

Quoting the 6th century Roman senator and Christian philosopher Boethius, who critiqued disturbing trends he saw in Roman society, Lincoln’s bishop said in treating individuals as though their “gender identity” has changed, we “habituate men to their sickness, instead of curing them.”

The government edict ignores the real issue, Bishop Conley said, and is coercive, demonstrating how lost American society has become.

“The Obama administration’s directive is a sign of the brokenness of our culture; of our lost sense of the common good, of individual goodness, of true freedom, real rights, and authentic happiness,” the bishop wrote. He noted that Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts had pointed out that the directive “is basically a kind of coercive opinion, which does not enjoy the authority of law,” and “is a form of bullying.”

“Ultimately,” Bishop Conley added, “it is a sad sign of how much we have lost our way; how little of the Gospel’s good news forms and shapes our culture.”

The Lincoln prelate pledged to make every effort to assist families with children suffering from gender dysphoria, saying improvements could be made to that end.

“But the Church will not deny that God created us male and female,” he said. “We will not confuse respect and compassion with capitulation to a tragic delusion.”

The bishop also said caring for children mandated a commitment to the truth, promising to uphold it in the diocese’s schools no matter what.

“Our Catholic schools will continue to teach and live the truth, because of our care for every student,” said Bishop Conley. “We can only help students grow in holiness when we help them to live in accord with the truth. We will continue to do that, no matter the cost.”